Sharingan Rats
by Lucillia
Summary: At Wave, it is discovered that Naruto has the Sharingan, and everything goes off into left field from there. Especially after Sasuke and Naruto discover that the Uchiha clan has been cursed to be continually reborn as rats. One of two stories about Naruto with the Sharingan which diverge at Chapter 9. If you want the story without the Uchiha rats, see Uzumaki and Uchiha.
1. Lineage

There had been stories of children civilian and otherwise finding that they had an unexpected Kekkei Genkai and learning that they had an ancestor from one of the clans that had wandered through the region their family was from before the founding of the shinobi villages a few generations before. Most of the stories were disbelieved, though there were a few odd Hyuuga in Konoha who had never attended the Academy and has seemingly cropped up out of nowhere.

This is the story of one such child. Not one of the mystery Hyuuga, a kid with a random Kekkei Genkai that he supposedly shouldn't have had.

The story could arguably begin in the land of Wave when the Kekkei Genkai had seemingly randomly appeared out of nowhere, but it could also have been said to have started in two different places on the same day nearly eighty years before. One place was the main Uchiha Encampment, the other was an inn several miles away.

While the Uchiha all had houses somewhere, the clan was constantly in demand for missions and battles, which meant that they rarely if ever got to see them and occasionally returned to find that some asshole had looted them to the foundation while they were gone. As soon as a Uchiha was deemed old enough for travel, most of his or her year was spent living out of a bag in a tent. Life in the camp wasn't all that bad however. There was a sizable band of people who made a living following the Uchiha around providing goods and services for them. Madara's decision to allow the strip show to come within a mile of the camp had been the best one he'd ever made as far as most of the men were concerned.

Inside one of the tents clustered around the central water source, one Uchiha Hikaku was ahem, busy. Uchiha Hikaku was a young man of fairly average height with the long face and pointed chin that was pretty much standard in the clan. He had dark brown hair which he kept up in a short ponytail, and eyes that were ink black when they weren't Sharingan red. He was strong, and well regarded by his peers.

Hikaku's current companion was a rather voluptuous blond with brilliant blue eyes who claimed that her family name was Namikaze. Whether or not this was true was up for debate. She hailed from parts unknown, and had been following the Uchiha around for only a little while. She wasn't as pure as fresh driven snow, nor was she one of those whores that even those who were too ugly to get a girl of their own were afraid to touch. That suited Hikaku just fine since he wasn't looking for a wife at the moment.

While Hikaku was occupied with his companion, several young adolescents were experiencing the joys of a meal that didn't come out of a communal cooking pot half burned at an inn several miles away while their cousin and teacher was occupying himself with other things in a room upstairs. One of the first things a Uchiha learned when he or she joined the clan in their travels for missions was that they were pretty much on their own for food because their fathers, and in some cases mothers, weren't going to cook for them any longer. Buying grub from the camp followers was expensive, and couldn't be done too regularly on the cut they received from the Clan's pay, hence their pooling their resources and having the best cook in the group deal with the cooking. The current best cook of the generation however royally sucked.

This story isn't about the teenagers who were scarfing food down as if they'd been starving for weeks despite the fact that the adults in the clan made sure they were provided for in that area even if it meant that they went without. It isn't even about their teacher Uchiha Izuna, co-head of the Uchiha clan and brother to Uchiha Madara even though he has a small part in it which come to think about it is about to pretty much come to an end.

Izuna kissed the sleeping woman who had shared his bed one last time as he got up to get dressed. He knew that he was going to get a talking to or rather yelling at from his brother over this. The Uzumaki were related to and allied with the Senju, therefore making it a strong possibility that the woman he'd met while herding the brats to some minor training mission was a spy. It didn't matter though, what was done was done, and what was done was fun.

Izuna would come to regret leaving the woman while she was asleep. She stopped chasing him eventually when she became too pregnant to run, but the damage was done and as far as he and Madara were concerned, if they never heard the word "Dattebayo" again, it would be too soon. By that point, Izuna didn't care whether or not the child was actually his, he never wanted to see its mother or her brothers again, and if the kid was like any of them...

While a certain Uzumaki was giving birth to a rather beautiful daughter with hair so dark red it was almost black and inky black eyes in the land of Whirlpool, a certain blonde was giving birth to a brown haired son with inky black eyes in a place that would soon become part of the land of Fire. Neither child would meet the other during their lifetimes, and neither child would show any sign of developing the Sharingan. Unlike the Byakugan, the gene that allowed the Uchiha to unlock their Kekkei Genkai was recessive.

Izuna's daughter grew up to be quite the beauty, and had gained one hell of a reputation on the battlefield. Eventually, she settled down and married another Uzumaki. They ended up having a lovely daughter and several healthy sons all with the standard Uzumaki features and dark eyes. The daughter would show no signs of the Sharingan, though one of her brothers would shortly before he died in battle.

Hikaku's son grew up to be a reasonably handsome if rather average shinobi who survived the First Shinobi War. He ended up settling down with a rather beautiful platinum blonde medic he'd met after becoming injured. They would have a blond haired, blue eyed son who showed absolutely no signs of having the Sharingan.

Neither Izuna's granddaughter nor Hikaku's grandson would meet. Izuna's Granddaughter would marry another Uzumaki, and Hikaku's grandson would marry a rather pretty Chunin with sun blond hair and blue eyes. Apparently, Hikaku's preference for blonds had been handed down the line.

It had been Izuna's great-granddaughter and Hikaku's great-grandson who met. Neither Uzumaki Kushina nor her Academy classmate turned boyfriend turned husband Namikaze Minato Yondaime Hokage of Konoha had any inkling that they were related to the rather sizable clan that made its home in Konoha as Minato's grandfather had considered the man who raised him to be his father and never said anything about the man who had sired him to his children, and Kushina's grandmother had only gotten a terse "He's dead" in reply to any questions she'd asked about her father. Neither Kushina nor Minato had shown signs of having the Sharingan, though there had been some questions about exactly how Minato had been able to keep up with things when he was using the Hiraishin to take down fifty to a hundred opponents practically all at once.

On the day Kushina and Minato's son Naruto was born, Uchiha Madara attacked. While he was removing the Kyuubi from Kushina, he found himself wondering about a certain possibility after hearing the woman say "Dattebane", and deciding not to think on it any further. While there may have been something of a resemblance about the eyes, the Uzumaki woman didn't look anything like his brother Izuna, and that annoying verbal tic was more than likely a common problem amongst the Uzumaki.

Twelve years later, on a bridge in the land of Wave under a dome of ice mirrors, two boys suddenly found it much easier to track their exceedingly fast opponent, and when Uchiha Sasuke had briefly looked his teammate in the eyes he'd gotten the shock of his life when he'd found another pair of Sharingan looking back into his own.


	2. Reactions

Sasuke stared at his teammate from his position on a futon in Tazuna's home. He wondered if he'd imagined what he'd seen on the bridge before the fake Hunter-nin's senbon had pierced him and rendered him unconscious. Not only was the dead last's name Uzumaki, but blond Uchiha were almost unheard of. Brown was the dominant Uchiha hair color with black coming in at a close second. The few blond Uchiha in existence at the time of the Massacre had a shade of hair that was closer to brown than platinum or sun yellow like the dobe had. Naruto bore almost no resemblance to the other members of his clan, though there was something about the shape of his eyes that reminded him of a couple of his cousins.

How could this...this Outsider have the Sharingan?

Finding out that their sensei had the Sharingan had been jarring enough. Kakashi had it in only one eye, and his looked to have been implanted though. Naruto's had appeared to be completely natural however. How could Naruto have a natural Sharingan when he had blue eyes though?

He would have to shelve this problem for later. There was no way he could solve it now.

&!&!&!&

Kakashi briefly wondered how Naruto had gotten the Sharingan since he knew for a fact that Naruto was Minato-sensei's son as he had tested the boy himself using some of Minato-sensei's hair that he'd kept for some odd reason. He ended up figuring that it was something that must have cropped up from his mother's line since if he remembered correctly, Kushina had what was commonly referred to in Konoha as the Uchiha chin.

Kushina-san had never mentioned being related to the Uchiha in all of the time he'd known her, but considering the fact that unlike the Samurai who could trace their lineage back for centuries, most shinobi couldn't accurately trace their families back more than five generations or so, it was entirely possible that Kushina-san hadn't known.

When he got to Konoha and made his post mission report, he saved the best bit for last.

"Sasuke has activated his Sharingan." he said.

The Hokage smiled at this, as did the Council that consisted of the rest of his former Genin team. Apparently, they'd been worried that Sasuke wouldn't since such late activations were rare and were relieved that it was not so.

"As has Naruto." he continued casually.

He was treated to the sight of the Hokage almost swallowing his lit pipe. Koharu and Homura both looked like they were going to have heart attacks.

"I-I think I misheard you." Koharu said when she finally found her voice "You just said that Naruto had...?"

"Activated his Sharingan." he replied casually.

Senju Tobirama's students all blinked at the same time and stared at him.

"Kushina." Homura finally said. "Has to be. I ran the genetic comparison between that boy and his father five times."

"Five times?" Koharu asked.

"Whether or not it was deserved, Kushina had a bit of a reputation, so naturally I had my doubts." Homura said.

"But still, five times?" Koharu said.

He decided to get out of there. He'd seen one of the famous Team Tobirama arguments once before, and had no desire to see one ever again. From the looks of things Homura was going to step on the hidden trap, and Koharu was going to explode.

&!&!&!&

Sasuke choked on dust as he furiously flipped through the clan roll frantically searching for the name Uzumaki. Nothing in his generation or his parent's or his grandparent's for that matter. Eventually, after hours of searching clan lists and complicated genealogy charts he finally found it. Underneath the names of Uchiha Izuna and some Uzumaki woman whose given name had been blotted out was "Possible child, gender unknown". There was a birth year for this child that was nearly eighty years ago.

That had to be it.

Since his mother was also of Izuna's line, this apparently made him and Naruto something along the lines of first cousins several generations removed.

&!&!&!&

Naruto stared in the mirror. It had taken a while, but he'd figured out how to activate that Sharingan thing on command. The Sharingan was the Uchiha clan's Kekkei Genkai thing. Did that make him a Uchiha? Did all of his family die when the Uchiha did? Had his parents been living in the Uchiha district all of his life?

The Old Man had told him that his parents had died on the day of the Kyuubi attack, but other people had said that his parents hadn't wanted him and that they were too ashamed to even be associated with him. Who was right?

The Old Man cared about him. Had the Old Man lied to him to protect his feelings?

Eventually, he tore his eyes away from the mirror. Iruka had offered to take him to ramen and if he didn't stop staring in the mirror, he'd be late. After washing his face and hands like he'd planned on doing, he headed out the door and to Ichiraku Ramen.

Iruka was waiting for him in his usual spot.

"Well Naruto, now that you've had your first C-rank, you should be able to treat me." Iruka joked.

"No way!" he replied.

&!&!&!&

"What's wrong Naruto?" Iruka asked his former student. Something had seemed off with the boy for the entire meal, and now the child was picking at his third bowl instead of wolfing it down like there was no tomorrow.

"Iruka-sensei, do you know who my parents are?" Naruto finally asked.

He didn't know anything about Naruto's lineage beyond the fact that the boy was an Uzumaki, and that the Uzumaki came from Whirlpool.

"No." he replied, wondering where this conversation was going.

"The Old man said that they died during the Kyuubi attack but..." Naruto said.

Someone had clearly been saying some nasty things about Naruto's parents again.

"Naruto. If the Hokage says that your parents died during the Kyuubi attack, then they died in the Kyuubi attack. Whoever told you that they didn't was lying." he replied. He hadn't known when Naruto's parents had died, and for a long while had been one of the ones who thought that they might have abandoned him until the Hokage had flat out stated they were dead. It was ironic really that the monster that had taken his parents had also taken Naruto's. It was even more ironic that the monster that had taken Naruto's parents was sealed inside of him.

"What's got you worrying about this now?" he asked, gently interrogating his former student, hoping to get the name of who he was going to beat up or give a severe yelling at depending on their age.

Naruto turned to him and blinked. When the boy's eyes opened, they were red. Sharingan red. Sharingan red with one black tomoe in the right eye and two in the left.

"Holy..."

&!&!&!&

"How did your mission go?" Sakura's mother asked her over dinner.

"Okay." Sakura replied. Thre were certain things about her mission in Wave that she couldn't share even with her parents.

"Did anything interesting happen?" Sakura's mother asked.

"Both Sasuke-kun and Naruto activated their Kekkei Genkai." Sakura replied, figuring that little detail was safe enough to share since it would be getting around the village soon.

"What is the de- er Uzumaki boy's Kekkei Genkai?" his mother asked, sounding worried.

"The Sharingan, just like Sasuke." she replied.

Her mother dropped her chopsticks and her father choked on his water.

"Using one of _Them _was rather clever considering..." her father eventually said after a long silence.

"Shh dear, we can't talk about _That_." her mother said, giving her a significant look.

The meal ended in silence. Sakura went up to her room afterward burning with curiosity about what it was that her parents couldn't talk about in front of her.

&!&!&!&

Danzo picked up his evening report on any and all important happenings within the village with a small smile and started to read. Ten seconds later, he sprayed tea all over it.


	3. Team 7

Naruto went to his training with a slightly lighter heart, only slightly due to the fact that he still had no clue who his parents were, and either way they were dead. Iruka had comforted him and explained things to him the night before. As for why he was Uzumaki rather than Uchiha, Iruka said that there had been a great deal of confusion in the aftermath of the Kyuubi attack when hundreds of new orphans flooded the system. It was entirely possible that someone had screwed up the paperwork somewhere.

Sasuke was already at the training grounds when he arrived, as was Sakura. Sasuke looked as if he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the night before, and it clearly hadn't improved his mood considering the fact that he was actually snapping at Sakura rather than sitting there and silently ignoring her pawing and constant "Sasuke-kun this, Sasuke-kun that, Why don't we go on a date Sasuke-kun? Sasuke-kun, Sasuke-kun, Sasuke-kun".

Sasuke was the first to notice his presence, and looked up at him. Oddly enough, the other boy wasn't giving him that look of cold dismissal, that look that stated that he was not worth his regard because he was so far beneath him it wasn't even funny. Instead, Sasuke looked...nervous?

"It took me a while, but I think I figured out how we're related." Sasuke said when he reached his teammates.

"Really?" he asked. The Old Man hadn't been able to tell him who his parents were. Alot of people had died the day of the Kyuubi attack, and many were still unidentified. It was possible that his father was amongst those. When he was younger, the Old Man had told him that he'd been found next to the body of a woman named Uzumaki who had recently given birth. It was entirely possible that his mother had asked the Uzumaki woman to evacuate him during the confusion, and the Uzumaki woman hadn't made it. If the Uzumaki woman had recently given birth, he could have naturally been mistaken for her baby.

"I believe that you're my third cousin through Uchiha Izuna." Sasuke said as he pulled out an old scroll and unfurled it. He then pointed to a spot on the scroll.

"Why don't they know what the baby is or have a name for it?" he asked as he looked at the spot where the Izuna guy's name was next to that of an Uzumaki.

"The person I believe to be your great-great-grandmother went back to her homeland before the child was born." Sasuke said.

"So I really am an Uzumaki." he said. That was a relief. He'd spent the night afraid that he'd been running around with someone else's name. He'd even had a nightmare where the real baby of the Uzumaki woman he'd been found next to had come and demanded that he give him his name back. The Uzumaki woman he'd been found next to really had been his mother, though that left the question of why he'd been found next to her if the Yondaime had sealed the fox inside him. He just had the same great-grandpa or whatever as Sasuke, and got the Sharingan thing from him.

"Yes, and you're also a Uchiha." Sasuke said. There was an odd look in his eyes when he said it. It reminded him of the feeling he had when he watched other children go home with their parents.

"Okay." he said as he settled into his usual spot while waiting for Kakashi-sensei. He didn't know what else to say. It was strange, he had family, and that family was Sasuke of all people.

"I found a picture of a cousin of ours that you resemble somewhat." Sasuke said as he refurled the scroll they'd been looking at and put it away.

"Really?" he asked.

&!&!&!&

Sasuke pulled out the photograph of his mother's younger cousin who had died before he and Naruto were born. There was a strange tight, almost painful feeling in his chest. Naruto hadn't rejected him. He'd gotten maybe two hours of sleep before he'd come here, and in those hours he'd had a dream in which Naruto had firmly rejected him because of how he'd treated him over the years, and told him where he could shove the Uchiha Clan and how.

He'd been rather tactful when mentioning Naruto's ancestor. He'd found Uchiha Izuna's journals in the clan archives, and Naruto's Great-great-grandmother had been described as a "Howling witch" who had chased their great-great-grandfather halfway across the continent before her brothers came, beat him up, and dragged her back to some place called Whirlpool. The word "Dattebayo" ended up haunting their great-great-grandfather's nightmares until the day he died.

He was damn glad Naruto wasn't a girl. Having him as a fangirl probably would have killed him.

When he showed Naruto the picture of cousin Obito who bore something of a resemblance to him despite the fact that Obito had black hair and black eyes, and Naruto was a blond with blue eyes, he decided not to mention that he'd encountered Obito's name before in his father's older journals mainly in conjunction with the words "Idiot" and "Moron".

Naruto asked a bunch of painful questions about his.._their..._their family that he hadn't really wanted to answer while they waited for their perpetually tardy sensei to arrive.

&!&!&!&

Kakashi showed up with a "I was helping an old lady carry her groceries home." when he'd felt he'd kept his little team waiting long enough. Naruto turning out to have the Sharingan had solved a bit of a problem for him. When it came to the saying "Those who can't do teach." the converse was also true. He hadn't been allowed to reject _this_ team however, and hadn't known what to do with it once he got it.

With Sasuke it had been a waiting game over the Sharingan. Once Sasuke had the Sharingan, it would have been easy, just Monkey see, Monkey do then done. Sakura didn't seem to care too much about her ninja career, so he'd decided to set her to pretty much the standard Academy forms until she decided to take things seriously. If she decided to take things seriously, he would have found a way to foist her off onto someone else. There were a sizable number of people who owed him favors, including Maito Gai.

With Naruto however...With Naruto, he had the feeling that he should be teaching his sensei's son like he said he would while the child was still inside his mother. He just didn't know where or how to begin. The boy was a total mess when the Academy finally turned him loose on the world.

Now that Naruto had the Sharingan, he had an idea as to what to do. Naruto could play Monkey see, Monkey do with Sasuke.

Smiling at Naruto and Sakura's antics, he chucked a scroll at Sakura and called the boys over...

&!&!&!&

Sakura sighed. About the only time she saw her family these days was at dinner. She was up with the sun almost every morning and out the door before mother had breakfast finished.

"So, how did your day go?" her mother asked.

"Pretty good actually. After training, we got a D-rank walking dogs. Naruto took the biggest dog and it dragged him straight into a trap field. Sasuke-kun yelled at the dog's owner for like ten minutes straight when the mission was over." she replied.

"Really?" her mother asked.

"By the way, Sasuke-kun and Naruto figured out how they were related." Sakura said. "They're both the great-great-grandsons of Uchiha Izuna."

"That name sounds familiar." her father said with a frown. Her father was a history buff and was practically obsessed with anything related to the founding of Konoha.

"He was Uchiha Madara's younger brother." she said. She knew this fact because she'd gotten a good look at the family tree that Sasuke had shown Naruto when Sasuke had asked her to guard it with her life while he and Naruto were sparring.

Her mother choked on her food at this.

"What the hell was the Yondaime thinking? I'd sooner trust a fox to guard a goddamn henhouse!" her father yelled.

"Darling!" her mother said. "Shut the hell up before..."

"Sorry dear." her father replied.

Sakura went to bed once again wondering what it was her parents couldn't tell her, and wondering what the Yondaime had to do with it.


	4. Clan Symbols

Naruto stared down at the shirt Sasuke had given him when he'd shown up for training. It was nice of the teme to give him a present but...

The shirt was blue. It was blue, and it had that stupid looking fan on the back of it.

"Put it on." Sasuke said.

"Why?" he asked.

"Clan law states that anyone who has the Sharingan is a Uchiha." Sasuke said. "All Uchiha shinobi are to wear the symbol of our clan."

"But it's blue." he said. It wasn't that he wasn't appreciative of the gift, but orange was his color. Not only that, but it looked like it would actually fit, which was a bit of a problem. One of his tricks for escaping was wriggling out of his clothes. Doing so was much harder when they actually fit.

"Wear that for now. We'll get an orange one later if you insist." Sasuke said, making a face at the idea of an orange shirt for some reason.

Sighing, he pulled off his jacket and pulled the blue shirt over his mesh top. The damn thing had that silly wide collar like the one on Sasuke's shirt which he'd amused himself with by tossing things into it on several occasions.

Kakashi-sensei did a slight double-take when he saw what he was wearing when he finally deigned to show up.

&!&!&!&

Sasuke brought Naruto to the shinobi outfitters where he usually purchased his clothing after training and missions were over for the day. He had started coming here after he'd outgrown his clothing several months after the Massacre. He'd refused to even consider wearing any of Itachi's old stuff which his mother had packed away. In fact, he'd burned all of Itachi's stuff and chucked what he couldn't burn in the trash.

As he predicted, Naruto had grabbed something that was baggy and orange and looked like it had a million pockets. He would have to have a very serious discussion with the boy later about proper attire. For now, he would try to make sure that what the boy picked at least fit, and didn't completely make him look like a clown.

It was true that clan law stated that all who had the Sharingan were Uchiha, but how the clan had usually interpreted that law was counter to how he had chosen to interpret it. Had he followed tradition, he would have rather swiftly become the last Uchiha in Konoha, and someone would have been stuck with the task of mopping up Naruto's blood and preparing him for burial. There were too few Uchiha left now to follow that bloody tradition though. Naruto was family, his blood, his kin. Naruto would be helping him restore the clan when the time came. Naruto was to be protected, especially if Itachi decided to come back and follow that tradition for his own personal amusement.

When they got to the counter, the old man who rang up their purchases went to the back, brought out a small box, and blew some dust off of it. He then opened the box and pulled out several copies of the symbol of the...Namikaze clan?

"That's not the right clan symbol." he said.

"It's not?" the cashier asked in surprise. "I could've sworn it was."

The cashier came back with another dust covered box. This one contained the symbol of the Senju clan.

"That's not right either." he said.

"Really?" the cashier asked.

The cashier came back with a much larger box that contained the red spiral that was on the back of Naruto's jacket as well as on the backs of every Konoha uniform.

"Not that one either." he said, wondering what the cashier was playing at.

"Really? And which one is the correct one then?" the cashier asked.

"The Uchiha fan." he replied coldly.

"His father was a Namikaze, and there's more Senju in him than Uchiha, and more Uzumaki than both." the cashier grumbled as he grabbed the box that contained the Uchiha fans, pulled out several, and started attaching them to the back of Naruto's new shirts and coat in a manner that suggested that he would rather not.

&!&!&!&

Akihara Satoshi scowled as he watched the son of the bastard everyone knew but couldn't prove had summoned the Kyuubi lead the Kyuubi's jailor away. He'd seen the small thread of Uchiha when the Uzumaki boy's father had stood on the seal he kept to insure that no-one wore marks they weren't entitled to many years earlier. The thread was also present in the son, but it was not wide enough for him to consider the boy Uchiha.

The part of his job that he considered to be the most important was the guarding of the clan symbols, and the insuring that they went to those of the proper heritage.

As far as he was concerned, the boy who had just left was Namikaze first as that had been his father's clan, Senju second as that had been in both parents' lines, Uzumaki third as that was his mother's clan, and Uchiha last if at all as the boy was 1/8 Uchiha at the most, like his father. The arrogant little Uchiha bastard had stood there and coldly took almost all of the Uzumaki child's heritage away from him. He understood why the Hokage had chosen the Uzumaki name considering the great things the Namikaze boy had grown up to do, and the enemies he made while doing them, but this...

"More Senju than Uchiha." he grumbled as he put the boxes away for another day, knowing that two of them wouldn't be used in a good long time if ever again. Almost all of the small number of people who still bore the Senju name were civilians, and didn't show any inclination to be otherwise. As for the Namikaze, the Uchiha boy had just ensured that their clan symbol would forever gather dust, like so many others that were stored in the back room.


	5. Dumpster Diving

Sasuke frowned as he studied Naruto. The more he looked at him, the more possible it seemed. Namikaze. Naruto was related to the Yondaime somehow, probably a nephew or a cousin. The Namikaze clan was small, small enough that he'd never encountered a Namikaze in his life, and had apparently virtually died out at some point if the dust on the box that contained copies of their clan symbol for attachment to clothing purchases was anything to judge by. Considering the war that had taken place shortly before he and Naruto were born and the Kyuubi attack, it was entirely possible that Naruto was the last of the Namikaze bloodline.

The fact that Naruto had Senju blood was even less of a surprise. Every clan in Konoha had blood ties to the Senju, including a small portion of his own before the Massacre.

The Uzumaki was no surprise at all, considering Naruto's surname which if he had anything to say about it would soon be changed.

Naruto was a Uchiha. Whatever else he may have been was irrelevant.

"What was that all about back at the shop dattebayo?" Naruto asked as he pulled on his new coat which wasn't nearly as eye-searing a shade of orange as his old clothes had been. It seemed to be of a similar pattern to that of their cousin Obito, except for the fact that it was orange with black trim. How the hell Naruto had found it, he didn't know.

"I really don't know." he said. "The old man once tried to give me the symbol of some obscure clan, something to do with my father that I really hadn't been paying attention to."

He had been paying attention. The only reason he'd returned to that shop after such an insult was that it was the best in Konoha. He'd heard the rumors about his father before when he was younger, and did as his parents suggested, which was to ignore them.

"The old man probably thinks that you're the Yondaime's cousin or something." he continued. "You look like you could be."

"The Yondaime's cousin? Really?" Naruto asked, with little stars in his eyes. From the looks of things, Naruto was about a half second away from going back to the shop and getting the Namikaze clan symbol put on all of his clothing.

"I wouldn't try wearing the Namikaze clan symbol if I were you." he said, deciding to cut Naruto off at the pass. "Iwa swore revenge on the Yondaime's family and will kill any of his clan that they encounter. Besides, you're Uchiha."

From the look on Naruto's face when he mentioned Iwa's plans for revenge on the Yondaime's relatives whether they were real or not, it seemed that Naruto wouldn't be wearing anything but the red and white uchiwa any time soon.

"What was that whole thing with the Senju?" Naruto asked as they approached his apartment building, apparently still pondering the old shopkeeper's antics.

"Just about everyone in Konoha has Senju blood in them, you've probably got a tiny bit more than most." he replied. "You're still Uchiha."

"I'm also related to the Shodaime, the Nidaime, and the Yondaime. There's no way in hell I won't become Hokage!" Naruto yelled.

He and Naruto watched in complete shock as a patrolling ANBU missed a jump, fell off the roof of Naruto's apartment building, and landed in the dumpster instead of leaping to the roof of the building next to it.

Naruto raced over to the dumpster and peered inside.

"Hey ANBU-san, are you alright?" Naruto asked.

He received a groan in response.

He and Naruto turned to look at each-other. This was so far out of his realm of experience it wasn't even funny. He came up with the only response he could think of at the time which was the method he used for sorting out disputes with his cousins that weren't worth bothering Tou-san over.

"Loser gets the medics." he said as he put out a fist.

He threw scissors, Naruto threw rock. He was almost completely winded when he reached the hospital, having run faster than he ever had in his entire life.

"What seems to be the problem Uchiha-san?" the nurse in the front lobby of the hospital asked.

"ANBU...fell off roof...landed in dumpster..." he managed to gasp out when he finally started to catch his breath.

"This I've gotta see!" one of the standby medics yelled as he grabbed a first aid kit and prepared to follow him out the door.

He felt like he was going to die by the time they reached Naruto's apartment building. The ANBU was still lying in the dumpster, and Naruto was talking at him. Every third word seemed to be "Ramen".

"What seems to be the problem ANBU-san?" the medic asked with a shit-eating grin.

Two more medics appeared as the ANBU summarized the situation with a rather liberal use of swearwords, some of which were new to him, and he'd thought he'd heard everything before after his father had had a particularly bad day at the office which had ended with him coming home completely covered in orange glitter. One of the medics had a camera, and was taking pictures "for evidentiary purposes should the ANBU wish to press charges against Uzumaki Naruto". He had a sneaking suspicion that the pictures were going to be put to a different use if the grin on the man's face was any indication.

Eventually, after giving a statement to the medics and another ANBU that had shown up out of nowhere, he and Naruto made their way to Naruto's apartment with the packages that contained Naruto's new clothes. His first impression upon seeing Naruto's apartment was...Naruto would be better off living elsewhere.

The apartment building wasn't the best, so he knew not to expect a penthouse suite say. Like the building, the apartment wasn't the best, nor was it the worst either. While not in the best shape, it was at least structurally sound, and didn't look to be infested with insects, arachnids, or rodents. The furniture looked to be older than Naruto by several years if not decades, and Naruto's housekeeping skills left a great deal to be desired. He would have to teach Naruto how to clean up after himself amongst other things.

"Pack up." he said when Naruto had set his new clothes down on a table.

"Why?" Naruto asked.

"You're moving to the Uchiha district." he replied.

"Why?" Naruto asked, looking shocked and confused.

"You're a Uchiha, and that's where you belong." he replied. It was as simple as that. The Uchiha district was home to the Uchiha, and Naruto was a Uchiha.

Life in the Uchiha district had been lonely with only him to occupy it, only him and his memories. Now there was another to share the virtually empty district that was a daily reminder of his loss and reason for revenge with him. He was sure that life with the Dobe would be many things, but there was one thing it would not be, and that was boring.


	6. Rats and Rumors

Naruto refused to pack. He'd let Sasuke boss him around so far since he was his cousin, and most of what he said and did seemed to make some sort of sense. He was Uchiha, so he wore the Uchiha fan, even if he thought it looked totally stupid. That he understood. Moving to the Uchiha district however...

He wouldn't move there even if Sasuke offered him the biggest house in the place. Besides being fucking creepy, someone had seriously been neglecting the upkeep there. He should know, he'd wandered around the place a few times after dark. No matter what the Teme said, he would be staying in his nice cozy rat-free apartment. Seriously, the rats in the Uchiha district could eat Kiba's dog. Heck, they could eat Kiba.

Sasuke ordered him to pack once again. He'd been quiet about Sasuke's demands because he was trying to be nice to the only family he had in the village, or at least the only acknowledged family he had in the village. He would be quiet no longer.

"Uh-uh, not doing it. I'm staying here where I know I won't get my face gnawed off in my sleep dattebayo." he said. "The Uchiha district's got rats the size of Akamaru."

Sasuke looked stunned at this for some strange reason, or at least stunned in that oddly apathetic way Sasuke managed. He had vague memories of an older boy who did that, one of the ANBU if he remembered correctly. Some bastard had given the unfortunate sod Monkey's shift on the day he'd finally gotten the prank for that jerk set up, and ponytail boy who now that he thought about it could have been a Uchiha ended up getting caught in it. The poor bastard had actually landed in the same dumpster that that other ANBU guy landed in earlier. His landing was a bit softer though since it was full at the time.

"Rats?" Sasuke asked.

"Yeah, big honkin' ones. They're effing everywhere dattebayo." he replied, wondering why Sasuke didn't know this since he actually lived in the Uchiha district. "How could you have not seen them?"

"Would you care to show me these rats?" Sasuke asked as if he didn't believe him.

"Sure. Meet me at the gate at, say eight or so." he replied.

"I'm usually in bed by eight." Sasuke said.

"Why?" he asked, wondering why someone would go to bed that freaking early.

"It's my bedtime." Sasuke replied.

"Tch. Whatever." he said.

&!&!&!&

Kiba did a slight double-take when he saw Naruto as he was heading home. The boy was wearing a new jacket, a jacket that didn't look like the one he'd worn for the last two years straight. There had been a time when he'd believed that Naruto had only one outfit since his clothes were always dirty, but Shikamaru had somehow figured out that Naruto had three identical copies of the same outfit like most of the rest of them. Sakura had five identical copies of that red dress of hers, and Sasuke had the most at seven identical copies of that stupid shirt and five pair of those dumb shorts.

"Hey Naruto, I see that you finally decided to change your clothes." Kiba said. Naruto usually changed the style of his attire at a rate of about once every two years as opposed to once a year like the rest of the class.

"Yeah, neat huh?" Naruto said as he spun around so he could take in the entire outfit.

One little detail stood out immediately, namely the big honkin' red and white uchiwa fan on the back of Naruto's new jacket.

"Naruto, why the hell are you wearing the Uchiha Clan symbol?" he asked.

"Because I'm a Uchiha." Naruto replied.

"No you're not!" he said, wondering why the hell Naruto was pretending to be a Uchiha, and why Sasuke hadn't beaten him up for it. Naruto was always chasing around after Sasuke, trying to be as good as him, but to go this far...

"Yes I am!" Naruto yelled back.

Naruto's eyes turned red. Red with black dots in them. Sharingan. He really wanted to know how the hell the other boy managed to do that since Naruto sucked royally at Genjutsu.

It was at that point that one of the Hyuuga that had been wandering around the marketplace that he'd been cutting through took one look at Naruto and yelled "Holy Shit!". Several people turned to see the source of the outburst, and upon noticing the Hyuuga's active Byakugan a mob of rather pissed-off women chased him out of the marketplace.

Several people turned to look at Naruto. Oddly enough, many of them didn't look surprised to see that Naruto seemed to have the Sharingan. His sensitive ears picked up several hissed whispers of "Madara's eyes" as Naruto walked off to some appointment he had after excusing himself.

Just what the hell was going on?

&!&!&!&

Naruto met Sasuke at the Gate of the Uchiha district at the appointed time. From the looks of things, Sasuke had been training practically since the moment he'd left his apartment.

"So, let's go and see these _alleged_ rats." Sasuke said.

"Okay." he replied. It was just dark enough for the creatures to be out and about.

As they wandered through the silent and dark district, he asked about the buildings, trying to overcome his nervousness. One thing he was afraid of besides the ginormous rats were ghosts. He didn't know why people didn't believe him when he said he saw one. He saw the ghost back when he was eight. He'd woken up one night to find a dark haired man in a strange mask with only one eye hole sitting there staring at him. When he threw the kunai he kept under his pillow just in case one of the villagers who gave him those hateful looks all the time got any big ideas at the man, it had gone straight through him and into the wall behind him. Somehow, he could tell that the man - or ghost rather - was exceedingly pissed at him for throwing the kunai as he vanished an instant later.

"What's that building over there?" he asked as he pointed to a rather nondescript building near the middle of the district.

"That's the Clan Library." Sasuke replied.

"I'll bet it has a ton of awesome jutsus inside. I can't wait to learn them all!" he said.

Sasuke sighed deeply at this for some reason.

"Why does everyone assume that the Uchiha clan library is chock full of Jutsu scrolls?" Sasuke practically moaned.

"You mean it isn't?" he asked.

"If you could remember practically every jutsu you ever saw for the rest of your life, would you really write the information down and leave it where some Outsider could sneak in and steal it?" Sasuke asked.

"When you put it that way..." he muttered, feeling embarrassed for yet again speaking without stopping to think. While he still wanted his name on the KIA memorial so he could be remembered as one of the village's greatest heroes, he didn't want that happening until he was old and gray like the Old Man and had several decades as Hokage under his belt. That way, the entry on the memorial stone would have the title Hokage next to it, just like the ones for the Shodaime, Nidaime, and Yondaime. Uzumaki, er Uchiha Naruto Godaime Hokage had a nice ring to it.

"So what is in the library?" he asked, honestly curious to learn what his and Sasuke's clan had considered worth keeping in their library.

"Clan records, genealogy charts, some of our ancestors' journals, books on just about everything under the sun." Sasuke replied.

It was at that point that the scurrying finally started. A rat that would give one of the larger Inuzuka nin-dogs a run for their money popped out of a hole near the foundation of one of the houses. All over the district, the rats went on the move, prowling their territory for the night, hissing, fighting, mating, and gnawing on just about anything and everything.

How could Sasuke have not known about this?

&!&!&!&

Hyuuga Hiashi sat impassively listening to the report one of the Branch members was giving him. He'd heard the rumors that had been flying through the civilian population. If certain civilians were to be believed, the Kyuubi's Jinchuriki was a descendant of none other than Uchiha Madara himself. He'd learned to take such rumors with a grain of salt long ago.

"How were you able to discern this?" he asked. According to the Branch member, he'd only gotten a glimpse of the Sharingan, and that left the question of why he'd had his Byakugan active at the time.

"I was um..." the Branch member said, sounding slightly embarrassed.

"You were looking through people's clothes again weren't you?" he said.

The red flush and squeak that was oddly reminiscent of his elder daughter Hinata was all the answer he needed. Most Hyuuga seemed to go through this phase during their teens. It usually passed by the time one reached their mid-twenties and their hormones began to settle. Most Hyuuga were discreet about this and didn't let themselves get caught. The particular Branch member in front of him however was usually caught at least once a week.

He would have to deal with that later. For now however, he had to ponder the latest revelations about Uzumaki Kushina's son. That woman had packed quite a punch when they were children, and he'd rather quickly learned that it was best not to get caught looking through her clothes a second time.

&!&!&!&

Uchiha Madara frowned as he read the latest reports on the rumors coming out of Konoha. This couldn't be right. Back when he was young he - apparently unlike his brother and half of his clan for that matter - actually knew what a condom was and how to correctly use it.


	7. The Senju Exterminators

Senju Aramaki sighed as he flipped through his magazine. It had been a rather slow week. Come to think of it, it had been a rather slow month. As he was reading an article on baking tips for housewives, the bell above the door tinkled. He turned around to find Uchiha Sasuke walking in. Uchiha Sasuke whose arrogance and bad attitude put most of his late - and rather unlamented in his opinion - clan to shame.

"Uchiha-sama." he said in his "trying to be nice to customers he'd rather have drop dead" tone of voice. "What can I do for you this afternoon?"

"I came to talk to you about a set of pest control seals that were supposed to be good for a decade." The Uchiha boy said, sounding as if he were barely restraining a great deal of anger.

"What about them?" he asked.

The Uchiha boy slammed a rather sizable dead rat down on the counter. From the looks of it, it had been taken out by a Kunai.

"Can you explain why there are thousands of these running around the district when father had those seals put in only eight years ago?" the Uchiha boy asked.

"Thousands?" he squeaked in a totally manly fashion.

Great, just fucking great. Kaneda had cut corners again and he was going to have to pay for it. His family had been exterminators for three generations and were the best in Konoha, so good that the Uchiha had chosen to ignore the fact that they were Senju in both blood and name when they had contracted for their services. Thanks to Kaneda's lazy ways however, that reputation was seriously slipping. The last thing they needed was a scandal the likes of this one seemed to be shaping up to be.

"The extermination service will be free, as will the replacement seals which I will see to personally." he ground out as he handed the boy the standard set of pre-extermination instructions.

"Good." the boy said as he turned and left.

The next time he saw Kaneda, he was a dead man. Brother or no, there were some things you just didn't let slide.

&!&!&!&

Naruto yawned as he answered the door. His team had a day off, and he had been catching up on sleep. He probably should have gotten up earlier considering the fact that it was mid-afternoon, but he felt that he deserved a lazy day in bed considering all the shit he'd gone through recently. He hadn't had one of those in a good long time. When he opened the door, it had been to find his cousin on his doorstep with a couple bags at his feet.

"Can I stay with you?" Sasuke asked.

"Why?" he asked, though he had a sneaking suspicion as to what the answer might be considering what he and Sasuke had been doing the night before.

"The exterminators are going to be spraying the entire district with rat poison, and it won't be livable for the next week or so." Sasuke replied.

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I hope you brought your futon since all I've got is the bed, and I'm not sharing it with you." he replied as he moved aside to let his cousin in.

&!&!&!&

Aramaki sighed in relief as he went from house to house. Everything had been properly sealed away and stored somewhere before he arrived. He couldn't count the number of times he'd been forced to sit there waiting for a homeowner to finish putting their crap away before he could get his job done. The Clan Head's residence which looked to be the only lived-in house was properly emptied as well.

He carefully skirted a suspicious looking stain on the floor as Kaneda arrived in the middle of his inspection of the Head's residence. Seriously, what sort of messed up kid willingly lived in the same place in which his parents had been slaughtered.

"Guess who gets to clean up all the bodies this time?" he chirped mock cheerfully as Kaneda picked up an envelope which had been addressed to him that had been left on the kitchen counter.

"Not funny man." his brother said with a shudder as he opened the note that had been left for them.

"What the hell?" Kaneda said as he read the note.

"What's it say?" he asked.

"Don't forget to get under the seventh tatami mat from the far right in the Naka shrine." Kaneda replied, looking confused.

"Whatever." he said. Some people had the strangest places for hiding crap they thought was valuable.

&!&!&!&

"So, what do you think this is?" Kaneda asked as he inspected the strange stone slab in the room beneath the Naka shrine that they had decided to take on first.

"Don't know, don't care." his brother Aramaki replied as he sprayed poison and lay down several traps.

The rats in the Uchiha district were exceedingly vicious, much like the Uchiha themselves had been. He'd discovered that when he'd accidentally knocked over a rusted trash can in an alley, sending several of the damn things attacking rather than fleeing like normal rats. As they say, you are what you eat, and those rats had been eating Uchiha homes for years. Something had to have rubbed off on them.

He really shouldn't have cut corners on those effing seals in places he didn't think anyone would notice, even if the ten-year seals were a bitch to make. If he knew that anything that lived here would mutate like that back then, he'd have gone through all that trouble and then some. He could see beady red eyes peering out at him from a hole in the corner, and he was willing to swear that there were tomoe in them.

"Lets hurry up and get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps Nii-chan." he said, shuddering.

Aramaki stopped and stared at him. He knew why. He hadn't called Aramaki Nii-chan in a good long time.

&!&!&!&

The ANBU commonly known as Monkey scowled as he peered into the Uzumaki boy's window to make sure the brat was okay and not plotting Konoha's imminent destruction, as that was part of his patrol on this route. He had been put on the route that he'd avoided like the plague for years after Rat had broken his leg in the middle of his patrol. He hated this route with a passion, and for good reason.

He and the Uzumaki hadn't hit it off on the few times they'd encountered each-other face-to-face, and it didn't have anything to do with the Uzumaki's unwelcome tennant. To say that the Uzumaki disliked him was an understatement, and frankly the feeling was mutual. After the little misfire that had landed Uchiha Itachi in a dumpster while he'd been recovering from another mission in the hospital, the Uzumaki had come after him with a vengeance.

Nothing less could be expected of the offspring of the Red Hot-blooded Habanero.

He still had nightmares in which that boy's mother came back from the dead to beat the shit out of him for calling her Tomato.

The Uchiha boy was over, and he was scowling at the dinner the Uzumaki prepared. Apparently Instant Ramen wasn't good enough for the prima donna that according to rumor was related to the Uzumaki. Considering the fact that the Uzumaki was now wearing the red and white uchiwa, he supposed that rumor was fact.

It figured. No-one could hold a grudge like a Uchiha.

&!&!&!&

Sparrowhawk sighed as she did her patrol of the Uchiha district. The place was empty and dead. Nothing ever happened here these days. Patrols were much more fun a few years back when she and the others could take bets on who was cheating on who and the like. There was none of that now. There was just emptiness, emptiness and desolation, emptiness and desolation and the Senju Exterminators running screaming from a house as an army of rats pursued them.

Wait, what?


	8. Wrong End of the Stick

It had been two days, and Naruto was already ready to tear his hair out. Sasuke had nitpicked everything, and wouldn't stop complaining.

"Naruto do this. Naruto do that. Naruto clean that up. Naruto, were not having cup ramen for every meal even if it's cheap and you're a bottomless pit." he mocked as Sasuke launched into another lecture on how a "Proper" Uchiha was supposed to act.

He was beginning to see why his cousin Itachi had murdered the clan. He was about ready to strangle Sasuke after living with him for only two days. If the rest of their relatives had been like this...

Grumbling, he picked his dirty clothes up off the floor and dropped them into the laundry hamper that Sasuke had brought with him.

Seriously, who brings a laundry hamper when staying over at someone's place?

&!&!&!&

Sasuke ignored the stunned look on Sakura's face when he'd accepted her dinner invitation. He normally wouldn't have, but after two days of nothing but ramen and no hope of anything else for the rest of the week, he was ready to jump at the chance of a nice home cooked meal. He would have done the cooking at Naruto's place himself if all of the food in the fridge and cupboards that wasn't instant ramen wasn't spoiled.

After training was over for the day, he, Naruto, and Kakashi would be heading over to the Haruno residence as he'd made the invitation of the rest of the team a condition of his acceptance.

Training went the way it always went with Kakashi. Activate Sharingan, watch, copy, and ignore Sakura's squealing over how awesome he was.

&!&!&!&

Haruno Barako did her best to smile graciously as Sakura's teammates entered her home. It was hard as hell. First there was the Demon who had taken her older sister, then there was the Uchiha that her daughter was so foolishly infatuated with, then there was the sensei who had a reputation for being a pervert. If that wasn't bad enough, she vaguely recalled there being some sort of scandal involving his father back when she was a teenager.

While she pitied the Uchiha boy for being left all alone in the world, she really didn't lament the loss of the Uchiha all that much. Let it not be said that she spoke ill of the dead, but she was one of the ones who was sure that the boy's father had been the one to unleash the Kyuubi on Konoha.

After the Uchiha died, their sins may as well have been wiped clean in the minds of some. In her mind however, the Uchiha deserved what they got. She would not hold things against the survivor who was both innocent and ignorant of the crimes of his parents however.

As they sat at the dinner table, she struggled to find a topic of conversation.

"That is a very interesting outfit Naruto-kun." she finally said after a while of searching about for something to say. The boy was wearing an orange and black coat that seemed vaguely familiar for some strange reason and black pants.

"Yeah. I got it at the place where Sasuke buys his clothes. The old man behind the counter was weird. First he tried to give me the Namikaze clan symbol, then he tried to give me the Senju clan symbol, then he tried to give me the Uzumaki clan symbol before he gave up and gave me the Uchiha clan symbol like Sasuke told him to." the Demon replied.

Hatake Kakashi who had yet to remove his face mask in her line of sight, but who had somehow managed to finish his meal during the brief distraction that had been caused by a nearby explosion which had turned out to be one of Sakura's tags going off randomly reacted strangely to the Demon's statement.

"Sasuke thinks that the old man thinks that I'm the Yondaime's cousin or something." the Demon continued.

This caused another unusual reaction in Sakura's rather stoic looking sensei.

"But..." Sakura started, looking confused for some odd reason.

"The whole Senju thing is because I got Senju ancestors like eveyone else in Konoha. My mother was an Uzumaki, so that one's what Sasuke calls self explanatory." the Demon continued as if Sakura hadn't interrupted.

"Oh?" she said, suddenly finding herself curious. "Who was your mother then Naruto-kun?"

"Dunno, other than the fact that her name was Uzumaki and that her great-grandma couldn't marry her great-grandpa because she went back to some place called Whirlpool." the Demon replied. "Monkey ANBU-san called me Habanero's brat a few times though."

Her husband made a rather strange choking noise at this that sounded suspiciously like "Tomato". She would have to ask later. Based on the appraising looks her husband was giving the Demon, it was possible that he knew who the Demon was talking about.

All too soon, the meal was over and she was almost gladly ushering Sakura's teammates out of the house. The Demon had atrocious manners, and the Uchiha boy was rapidly losing her pity. He was just as stuck up and arrogant as the rest of his clan. Why they put him within a mile of the Demon she didn't know, considering the possibility that his father or his mother who had also been missing that day could have passed down the secret for controlling the Kyuubi.

The sensei was the last to leave. When he did, he turned to them with a cold look in his eye and said "Say anything about what you heard this evening, and I will kill you myself".

She turned to her husband and child in confusion only to see a dawning look of realization come across her daughter's face which was soon replaced by an expression of total shock, then denial.

"What is it sweetie?" she asked as soon as the door was closed.

"It can't be. He can't be." Sakura said.

"What is it?" she asked again.

"The Namikaze were a minor clan that originated near what is present day Kirigakure. At the time of Konoha's founding, there were only two surviving members, a mother and a son. But..."

"But what sweetheart?" she asked, worried about her daughter's distressed expression especially in light of her sensei's threat.

"All of the Yondaime's other relatives died long before a child Naruto's age could be conceived!" Sakura said.

Her husband looked shocked then thoughtful before muttering "This is beyond what ninja call S-ranked, and we can't tell anyone."

Her husband didn't look like he would sleep anytime soon when they crawled into bed that night.

"What is it dear?" she asked her husband who looked extremely disturbed.

"He knew. He knew that something like that was going to happen, and he planned for it." her husband said.

"What do you mean dear?" she asked.

"Don't you think it's rather odd that the Kyuubi wasn't seen at any time between the Valley of the End and that day twelve years ago?" her husband asked.

"Well, now that you mention it, yes, it could be considered odd." she replied.

"If that thing could be sealed in the Uzumaki boy, it could have been sealed in someone else." her husband said. "Someone who was growing old, someone whose seal was weakening, someone that the Uchiha could have discovered and made a play for."

"Oh god." she said, seeing where her husband was going with this.

"Senju and Uchiha for control, Uzumaki for longevity. That Uzumaki boy's birth was no coincidence. The Yondaime personally made sure that there was another host waiting in the wings in case of something like what happened that day. The only problem was that it wasn't born in time to prevent most of the destruction. The instructors back at the academy all said that Uzumaki Kushina was special when I asked why they kept her around before I dropped out to take care of mom. All I saw back then was a massively incompetent foreign loser with a loud mouth and a penchant for pranks." her husband said.

"You mean..."

"The Yondaime never asked anyone to do what he wasn't willing to." her husband said. "The wily bastard sacrificed his own son long before it was even conceived."

&!&!&!&

Sakura silently slunk away from her parents' bedroom door, almost too shocked to process what she'd heard. The Yondaime hadn't killed the Kyuubi, he'd sealed the monster into a child he'd intended to throw away from the start, a child that practically the entire village hated for a reason they wouldn't name, which now that she thought of it was too extreme a reaction for all of the pranks Naruto pulled.

Kakashi-sensei knew. He had to have known considering the threat he'd made.

Who else knew?

Everyone in the village. Everyone except us children.

That had to be the reason they hated Naruto, the reason why they had told them to stay away from him, the reason they blamed Naruto for _something_ she couldn't quite catch.

Naruto had been born an hour, a minute, or a day too late to foil the Uchiha's plans, whatever they had been. Because of that, everyone blamed him for what happened, blamed him for everyone who died.

That was so unfair.

And, like her father and Kakashi-sensei said, she couldn't tell anybody.


	9. Sharingan Rats

Kabuto smiled as he peered into the cage. He'd gotten what he'd came for and then some. He'd ostensibly come to the Uchiha district to treat rat induced injuries, but his real objective had been securing some rather interesting test subjects for Orochimaru and himself. Several people had already taken a number of the creatures to study, and the T&I department had taken a few to use for their own purposes.

The current theory was that a rat that had fed on one of the dead Uchiha after the Massacre had somehow mutated, and passed that rather unusual mutation on to its offspring, creating a species of rat that was now being tentatively named _Rattus Uchiicus_. In actuality, it was more likely that one of the subjects of one of Orochimaru's genetic transfer experiments had escaped due to the incompetence of one of his assistants. The man had been playing around with Uchiha Madara's DNA before something had made him stop all experiments along that line cold long before he had joined the man.

Whether or not the creatures actually had the Sharingan was still up for debate.

As several people were also taking these highly vicious creatures home as pets, being seen with a cageful or two of the animals wouldn't raise any alarm bells, especially if he hinted that he planned on selling them and/or their offspring.

There was a yell of "Holy Shit! The damn thing just copied a Jutsu!" from the other end of the compound, and that ended that debate about whether or not the things possessed the Sharingan.

Senju Kaneda, the man who may have unwittingly aided in the creation of this new species by allowing the creatures to gain a toehold in the perfect environment for their development was standing there shaking, looking pale, and mumbling "I'll never cut corners on a job again. I'll never cut corners on a job again. I'll never cut corners on a job again..."

As he left the district, he could have sworn that he'd seen a rat with a stripe of orange paint across its face and a missing eye run by.

&!&!&!&

If this rat could grumble, he would have. He wouldn't have minded coming back as a rat so much if he hadn't been able to remember his prior life. He honestly didn't know how many of the unusual rats who infested his home were actually former members of his clan, and considering their usual disgraceful behavior, he didn't want to know. This time, he was at the bottom of the pecking order rather than the top. The leader of the rats - if there even was one - was a particularly large black male with a patch of spiky fur at the top of its head that seemed to hold him in contempt.

He had been captured along with several other rats by a brat he vaguely remembered as being the kid who hung around that medic whatshisname. After being carried to what he assumed was the boy's home, the boy had slipped on some heavy leather gloves, grabbed him, and dropped him into his own cage.

The damn thing he been unceremoniously plopped down into had clearly been made to house a hamster. He could see the little plastic wheel and the hookups for a habitrail set. As he was trying to figure out how to escape this humiliating prison, the brat set a small food dish and a tiny water bowl down in what he assumed was supposed to be his new home.

_Hmm. Sunflower seeds. I haven't had those in a long while. _The rat who had once been Uchiha Fugaku thought as he examined the contents of the food dish.

&!&!&!&

Naruto had followed Sasuke to the Uchiha district to check on the exterminators' progress shortly before they were due to head over to meet Kakashi-sensei for training. When they got there, it was to find a virtual circus. People were running around snatching up rats left, right and center and stuffing them into cages. Of the actual exterminators, there was no sign.

He went to sit down on a front stoop while Sasuke went to find out what the hell was going on. As he was sitting there listening to Sasuke yell at everyone, one of the rats approached him. The rat was kinda funny looking with a stripe of orange paint across its face and a small patch of spiky fur at the top of its head. It was also smaller than the monster rats that had frightened him for years.

Instead of hissing at him or attacking, the creature sniffed him and licked his hand like Akamaru would. When he moved his hand to shoo the creature away, it crawled up his leg, then up to the rest of him until it reached his face which it licked like a dog.

"Urrrgh. Rat slobber." he said as he pushed the amazingly friendly rat away. It promptly raced to the top of his head and sat there refusing to budge.

This little one-eyed guy wasn't so bad. Maybe he'd keep it.

&!&!&!&

The rat that had once been Uchiha Obito smiled as he rode into the pet store on the top of Naruto's head. Things had worked out better than he'd hoped they would.

He was moving in with Minato-sensei's son. Score!

He had almost been afraid that he'd be caught up in one of the sweeps when little Anko-chan who wasn't so little anymore had gone in looking for snake food. He'd also almost been caught by that silver haired creep who'd scooped up someone he was almost certain was Fugaku-bastard as well.

It had been agreed somehow, though communicating with each-other was near impossible, that Sasuke would never know about them as that could cause some very serious problems since they couldn't talk to him, and he more than likely wouldn't give them a chance to try any other means of communication before he started up with the fireballs and dealt with them. That meant that if Sasuke was out and about after dark, they made themselves scarce. They would of course protect the district from all intruders who dared show their faces after dark as a matter of course.

Everyone had to go and ruin it however when a bunch of idiots had decided to object to Minato-sensei's son's presence in front of Sasuke. Because of that, what could arguably be considered a new Uchiha Massacre had been started.

Seeing Minato-sensei's son wearing the Uchiha fan had been jarring to say the least.

"...And I think I'm gonna need some sort of special rat food." Minato-sensei's son was saying when he finally decided to tune into what was going on. "By the way, if you poison this pet like you guys did the last one, I'm gonna tell my teammate Sakura-chan. Since she's a sucker for small animals and still in contact with Sasuke's fan club which is rather extensive, you could only imagine what will happen. I'll also be telling my little friend Konohamaru who will tell all of his little friends as well."

The cashier rapidly paled and grabbed a bag that had a picture of a rabbit on it instead of whatever the hell he'd been reaching for. Soon, Naruto made his way out of the store with an exercise ball, a water bottle, a food dish, and food.

"Note to self. Thank Sasuke for teaching me how to deal with the assholes behind the counter." Minato-sensei's son said as he exited the store.

&!&!&!&

Hatake Kakashi showed up to find only two thirds of his Genin team there. Sakura looked like she hadn't gotten a wink of sleep the night before. Sasuke looked exceedingly irate for some strange reason, and kept muttering "Sharingan rats. Sharingan rats..." under his breath.

Apparently the poor boy had learned about the new species that had been discovered in the Uchiha district.

Naruto raced up as Sakura was giving him a death glare.

"Sorry I'm late!" Naruto said. "I had to go and get a few things for my new pet."

"Um, Naruto?" Sakura asked almost timidly. "What is that on your head?"

"My new pet. I decided to name him Orenjiiro no Shima." Naruto replied. "He's very friendly."

Naruto's new pet "Orange Stripe" turned out to be one of the recently discovered Sharingan rats, and as he inspected the creature who had an orange stripe painted across its face, he could have sworn that it had winked at him and gave him a thumbs up.

&!&!&!&

**OMAKE**

**Canon Universe:**

The rat that had once been Uchiha Fugaku shook his head to clear the dizziness as he awoke. As he surveyed the area around him, all he could see was destruction. Konoha and the Uchiha district that he and his kind had hidden in for a long time even after Sasuke had abandoned it years ago along with it were all a massive crater. It was then that something hit, and hit hard.

"Why oh why have the gods forsaken me?" he wailed. "I was finally in the afterlife!"

Around him, there were hundreds of other rats raising their fists to the sky and chittering angrily.


	10. Ninrats

The rat that had once been Uchiha Izuna had been in the middle of writing a haiku when the two boys had barged into the library, disrupting his flow and causing him to mar his elegant calligraphy with an unsightly scratch. The "gel pens" that he'd stolen from the Uchiha boy while he was away at the Academy and broken open in order to retrieve the rather unusual ink had come in an array of colors that had been unheard of in his day, and this had been shaping up to be one of his best works yet, until he'd been interrupted.

"Don't bring that filthy creature into the library!" Shouted Uchiha Sasuke who was currently the only Uchiha in Konoha, or at least the only human one living in the district.

"He's not filthy! I just gave him a bath. Dattebayo!" the other boy - a blond - shouted.

Dattebayo? Dattebayo? Oh gods no! Please no! Please don't be what I think that is.

"I don't even want to know why you want to keep one of those...those things anyway. They're an abomination!" Sasuke shouted.

"Orenji isn't an abomination, he's nice dattebayo!" the blond yelled back. The rat on the blond's shoulder nodded in agreement, suggesting that the creature was a reincarnated Uchiha like him, and, as he was beginning to suspect, all of the other rats in the area.

"Whatever. Just keep that thing away from me." Sasuke said as he got down some ink, a brush, and a stack of paper. "Now that the rats are gone, we're going to be working on your atrocious handwriting. It is completely unbecoming of a Uchiha."

Unbecoming of a Uchiha? Unbecoming of a Uchiha? That blond wasn't a Uchiha, was he? He couldn't be.

As soon as the ink was prepared, the blond's new "pet" ran down his arm and onto the table much to Sasuke's disgust, dipped its tail in the ink, and started to write.

**HI** it wrote.

"Holy shit! They're intelligent! Dattebayo!" the blond yelled.

**NO DUH BRAT. **the rat wrote.**WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU KEPT ALL YOUR MEMORIES INTO THE NEXT LIFE?**

"What do you mean "Kept your memories into the next life"?" Sasuke asked.

**FOR MOST OF US, IT WAS PUNISHMENT. FOR ME HOWEVER, THE AFTERLIFE WAS BORING AS HELL, AND I GOT TIRED OF WAITING AROUND FOR KAKASHI. BETTER LIFE AS A CURSED RAT THAN SITTING THERE LISTENING TO ALL OF SAKUMO'S WAR STORIES FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME.**

Sasuke took a while to process this, and then he looked shocked and devastated. "But I...I..."

**DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT KID, THOSE THAT HAVE EARNED THEIR ETERNAL REWARD WILL GO ON TO WHERE THEY BELONG, AND THOSE THAT HAVEN'T WILL BE BACK HERE NEXT WEEK OR MAYBE THE WEEK AFTER. YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING BUT RELEASE SOME UNLUCKY SODS FROM TORMENT, AND ADD A TINY BIT TO THE TORMENT OF THOSE WHO DESERVED IT. NO NEED TO FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT. WE'RE ALREADY SORTA DEAD, SO YOU TECHNICALLY DIDN'T MURDER ANYBODY.**

Sasuke looked slightly mollified, but still exceedingly guilty. It wasn't as if the poor kid had known what he'd been doing. There had been a reason that the Absolutely No Contact With Sasuke rule had been set up after all.

"So who are you then?" the blond asked at the same time as Sasuke.

**I AM UCHIHA OBITO, FORMER TEAMMATE TO HATAKE KAKASHI, AND FORMER STUDENT TO YOUR FATHER.**

"My father didn't teach you." Sasuke said. "At least according to his journals he didn't."

**NOT YOUR FATHER DIPSHIT, HIS FATHER. BY THE WAY, WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT SENSEI'S SON BEING A UCHIHA?**

"You mean you didn't notice during training?" Sasuke asked.

**NAH, TOO BUSY RUNNING AROUND IN THE RAT BALL GIVING THE PINK HAIRED FREAK OF NATURE SOMETHING OF A WORKOUT.**

"Naruto has the Sharingan, therefore he's a Uchiha." Sasuke replied.

**HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN ? !**

"We think Naruto's my third cousin through Uchiha Izuna on the Uzumaki side." Sasuke replied.

He let out a manly shriek of terror at this revelation, or at least what would have been a manly shriek of terror had he been human and had the lungs for it. He just knew that his life as a rat had been going too well. Way too well. He'd been allowed to set himself up as the King of the Rats after all. This was why. Fate was just waiting for the sins of his last life to come back to haunt him, and had been setting him up for this.

As he crouched there completely panicked, he felt a hand wrap around his midsection.

"It's okay Uchiha-san. I'll protect you from that nasty whatever it was that tried to attack you. Dattebayo." said a voice straight from the depths of hell while the blond nightmare creature petted his head as he shivered in its hand.

How? How could _this_ be his flesh and blood? How could _this_ have inherited his eyes? How?

&!&!&!&

Sakura stared when Naruto showed up at training with a pair of rats instead of just the one. The one with the orange stripe painted on its face was riding on the top of Naruto's head the way it had been the day before. The other one looked half dead and trembled in Naruto's arms.

Normally, she was afraid of rats, really, really afraid of rats, but after seeing the small pathetic sight in Naruto's arms...

"Naruto! What did you do to that rat?" she asked.

"I didn't do anything!" Naruto yelled. "Something attacked it yesterday dattebayo!"

The poor pathetic rat looked like it was going to have a panic attack.

"What's with the extra rat Naruto?" Kakashi who had miraculously shown up on time, making her check the sky for signs of the apocalypse six times already asked.

"Eh, since they aren't going to be leaving the Uchiha district any time soon, me and Sasuke decided to put them to good use, kinda like the Inuzuka nin-dogs." Naruto said as he set the trembling rat inside a blue rodent ball. "You should see Sasuke's rat. By the way, I changed Orenji's name to Obito. I don't know what the other rat's name is yet."

"YOU WHAT?" Kakashi roared, looking positively murderous for some reason.

Sasuke walked into the clearing at that moment. There may have been a rat on his shoulder, but if there had been she was certain that she'd been hallucinating since she could have sworn that she saw the rat do a handseal and vanish.

"What did you do this time Naruto?" Sasuke asked.

"I just told Kakashi that Obito's name was Obito, and he got pissed for some strange reason." Naruto said. "By the way, where's your rat?"

Sasuke looked at the shoulder where the rat had been.

"Damnit. Shisui ditched me." Sasuke said. "He always used to do that."

&!&!&!&

Fugaku mentally chuckled to himself as he escaped from the hamster cage. That had been a piece of cake. He mentally lamented that he couldn't stuff his cheeks like a hamster could. Sunflower seeds were his favorite, and he'd wanted to take more than a couple for the road.

Behind him, he could hear the medic's brat yelling "What the fuck? !". When he reached the door to the building they were kept in, several of the other rats were already gathered there.

One of the rats gave his whiskers a dismissive flick as if to say "About time Loser".

&!&!&!&

**Author's note: **For those who want to read a more serious version of Naruto having the Sharingan that doesn't have the Uchiha Clan reborn as rats, or those who want to read both this and that version, Uzumaki and Uchiha is up. The first 8 chapters are mostly identical to those in Sharingan Rats. Both stories diverge in Chapter 9.


	11. The Death of Obito

Obito watched as the pink haired one that had run screaming from him the day before as he'd chased her around in that neat exercise ball Naruto had gotten him fussed over the Boss. Why the Boss was so frightened of Minato-sensei's son that he didn't even try to attack him, he didn't know. The Boss was the Boss for one reason, and that reason was the Mangekyo. The Boss rarely used it since he didn't want to go blind, but everyone knew he had it. Why he didn't use it on Naruto was a mystery of the ages.

The pink haired one whose name was apparently Sakura pulled the Boss out of the blue exercise ball Naruto had gotten him that morning so he could run around outside without worrying about a bird or some other animal picking him off, and was trying to comfort him. It seemed to be working, but the Boss flinched every time Minato-sensei's son said "Dattebayo" which seemed to be an odd variant of his mother's "Dattebane".

That was a rather odd thing to be afraid of.

The jerk Kakashi was being very hard on Naruto today for some strange reason. He would have to get back at him for that. Maybe he'd take a piss on the man's toes.

The rat that Sasuke had dubbed Shisui, which most likely meant that it was little Shisui, returned in the middle of training with a cherry tomato in his teeth. A cherry tomato which he proceeded to eat in front of Sasuke, much to the boy's ire. Apparently Sasuke's favorite food which was onigiri stuffed with tomato and salmon was too big for him to carry, so he settled on Sasuke's second favorite - and a close second at that - instead.

The day was shaping up to be a nice one so far. After growing bored with the antics of Team 7, he'd gotten in a couple of laps around the training ground in.

&!&!&!&

He had been in the middle of a discussion with Naruto about having respect for the dead, and why he shouldn't have named his new pet after Obito, when the rat that had been named "Orange Stripe" the day before walked up to him, got on its hind legs, did something that almost looked as if it were miming unzipping a pair of pants, and took a piss on his foot.

He knew he'd probably feel guilty about it later, but then, he'd just sort of reacted, and kicked the small creature. It went flying and smacked into a tree.

There was a cry of "Obito!" as Naruto dropped his other rat, ran towards the rat that was either unconscious or dead, scooped him up, and yelled "I'll get you to a vet!" as he ran off in the direction of the Inuzuka compound.

He picked up Naruto's other pet rat with the intention of giving the exceedingly timid creature back to its owner. The animal shot him a look of pure hatred before...Were those handseals?

He dropped the rat, and apparently just in time since he found himself dodging a surprisingly massive fireball.

The rat shook its head dizzily but remained undaunted. The next thing he knew, he had half a pound of furious rodent running all over him biting and clawing any and every bit of his skin he could reach. Which was quite a bit since the creature had managed to make it up one of the sleeves of his shirt.

And just when he was thinking his day couldn't get any worse, Maito Gai ran up to him.

"Kakashi! I want to show you my most youthful pet! It can do Taijutsu!" Gai yelled, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was currently trying to get an enraged rodent out of his face-mask.

A Uchiha who had had a monster crush on Gai before she'd died smirked from her position on Gai's shoulder. She'd figured that if everyone else had finally stopped pretending to be the rats they now were and were leaving the district, she may as well go and spend time with the man she'd loved and had been forbidden to date since the freedom of being a rat rather than a Uchiha had come to an end and she'd be forced to be a "Proper" Uchiha otherwise. Watching Hatake Kakashi get his face gnawed off by one of her relatives was amusing to say the least.

It was at that moment that Naruto showed up crying and holding a rat that was obviously dead, apparently having come back to retrieve the hellbeast that was furiously clinging to Kakashi's mask and woulnd't let go. The boy spotted him, yelled "You killed Obito!", and furiously launched himself at him, forcing him to deal with both an angry boy and an angry rat.

&!&!&!&

Obito found himself in human form sitting in front of a fire.

"Great. I'm back here again." he muttered.

It was at that point that Hatake Sakumo noticed his presence.

"Kak- Obito! Welcome back!" the man said, sounding honestly glad to see him.

Well, it had been a while, and the man had had nothing to do but sit there poking at a fire while he waited for his son to come.

He felt somewhat guilty, but inside he was chanting "Please don't make me stay here. Please don't make me stay here..."

A moment later, he was blind and squirming against something warm. Yes!

As soon as he was weaned, he'd be heading back to Minato-sensei's son.

&!&!&!&

Izuna sat sealed in the blue sphere the boy had put him in before training. He was in the Hokage's office, and the man was deciding his fate. Actually, what the man was deciding was the point at which he would yet again be reborn as a rat. Death tended to be annoying and inconvenient since it meant that he'd be small, blind, helpless, and bored out of his skull for a couple of weeks.

Death probably would be a good thing in this instance since it would get him away from _Her _descendant and the "Dattebayo", at least for a little while. He had no doubt that Fate would insure that he met the boy who was named after a ramen topping again, and that the boy wouldn't let him go. He may as well get it over with in this lifetime, and hope that he suffered enough to finally move on.

On a side note, the Mangekyo Sharingan, so totally not worth it.

"But he was upset because Kakashi had just killed his friend! Dattebayo!" Naruto said as he clutched the sphere he was in protectively.

"But the matter remains that your pet attacked someone outside a mission or training, and the law is very clear on the consequences." the Hokage said sadly.

"But Uchiha-san..." Naruto started, arguing further, only to be cut off by a hand gesture from the Hokage.

An ANBU moved forward to take the sphere that Naruto was obviously reluctant to give up.

"I'll make sure it won't hurt him Naruto." The Hokage said. "It'll be just like he's going to sleep."

Naruto's response was to clutch the sphere so tight it cracked, run, and jump out of a window with the ANBU hot on his tail. Eventually, they lost the ANBU and ended up in an alley that contained several familiar looking rats.

"Here you go Uchiha-san. They won't be able to tell which one you are now. I'll find you later." Naruto said as he opened the sphere and shook him out.

It was at that point that one of the rats ran up and attacked Naruto.

"Ow you bastard! You bit me!" Naruto yelled at the rat before getting an evil gleam in his eye.

A moment later, the rat was wrestled into the blue sphere and sealed inside. A few seconds after that, the ANBU that had chased Naruto from the Hokage's office showed up and took the sphere from an unresisting Naruto.

&!&!&!&

Fugaku growled as he charged the side of the blue rat ball. He had been getting his revenge on the little brat who had done his best to make his final days as a human a living hell when the little twerp had shoved him in this thing and sealed it shut behind him.

A second later, the boy had handed him over to one of the ANBU who had carried him to the Hokage's office and set him down on his desk.

"That creature doesn't seem so tame to me." the ANBU said.

"No it doesn't." The Hokage said. "And, it's brown."

"Huh?" the ANBU said.

"Naruto's pet was black." The Hokage said with a sigh.

"Either way, it should be disposed of." the ANBU said.

&!&!&!&

The rat who had once been Uchiha Mikoto mentally hummed to herself. Now that they were all in the open and Sasuke knew who they were thanks to Obito, she could take a more active role in tending to her son. The poor boy hadn't been properly cared for in the four years she'd been gone.

The poor boy also now had hundreds of little brothers and sisters to play with like he wanted when he was little, which she would introduce to him later.

For now though, she would make sure that her son had a proper home cooked meal.

If only she could turn the stupid stove on.


	12. Not According to Plan

After leaving the Hokage's office, the rat who had once been known as Uchiha Fugaku found himself being carried to one of the veterinary offices that were attached to the Inuzuka compound. He'd heard the Hokage's orders in regards to him, and wasn't happy about them. Not at all. He had a chance for survival though, since he still had one trump card left to play. During his time as a rat, he'd learned through trial and error that he could successfully do one low level jutsu per day without passing out from Chakra Exhaustion. After carefully considering the number of D and E ranked Jutsu available to him, he decided to Henge himself into his former self, and use the element of surprise to enable his escape.

The instant he was pulled out of the rat ball that the Uzumaki brat who was dead the next time he saw him had trapped him in, he gathered his chakra and did the necessary handseal.

"Hey! Look! It's doing a jutsu!" one of the ANBU said as he did so as if such a thing were an interesting novelty.

A moment later, it appeared to the pair of ANBU who had been assigned to dispose of him as if his former self was sitting on the table he had been set down on, and glaring at them.

"I hated that bastard. Gas it!" the other ANBU said a second later when he realized that Fugaku sitting there and frowning at them was the entire show.

Fugaku only had time to widen his eyes in shock before the first ANBU reached through the illusion, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, pinned him down on the exam table, and stuck a needle into his rump. He was down for the count almost immediately, and several minutes later, he found himself to be small, blind, and apparently not in the afterlife yet. Much as it had been more times than he could count in the years since he'd died as a human. For some strange reason, most everyone else seemed to blame _him _for the massacre that had led up to this. Or, at least that's what it seemed like at times based on how they treated him.

He would have his revenge though. One day, those ANBU whose scents he was reasonably certain he remembered would be regretting crossing him. Then, they'd be regretting being born in the first place. The fact that he was about one one-hundredth their size didn't matter to him in the least.

* * *

><p>Yashiro squirmed slightly as the female who'd given birth to him weeks earlier licked his head and tried to flatten the spiky thatch on top of it in order to make it presentable, having given up on the stove and the home-cooked meal she'd been trying to prepare for some strange reason. Four years and counting of being a rat, and he had still to get used to this part. Every time his new 'mother' tried to make him presentable, it looked like he was being attacked by a giant rat.<p>

His little phobia didn't help in this situation either.

He tended to avoid mirrors like the plague, but a bit of self examination had revealed that his fur was as gray as his hair had been before he had died the night Itachi and some stranger who had also been Uchiha had run through the district slaughtering everyone. It was the same with every life since then.

Waking up to discover he was a rat following the slaughter of his clan had been unpleasant to say the least, especially since the first time, he hadn't known what had happened, and there had been a creeping horror as the wrongness of waking up to discover he was completely blind and helpless had hit. Then came the gradual return of his eyesight, and the discovery that he wasn't a puppy or a kitten as he had half expected to be after he'd felt all the tiny squirming bodies that surrounded him and the uncontrollable instinct that had led him to the large warm something and the sustenance it had offered.

Back then, his mother had been an ordinary grey rat who'd been living in a dumpster behind the Senbei shop, and he'd thought he'd been alone because he had not yet connected with others of his like. It was only later that the Uchiha had started giving birth to Uchiha further confusing family ties as several Uchiha became the children of a sibling or a cousin or a distant ancestor whose name would've been long forgotten if it weren't for the genealogical charts that were quietly mouldering in the Library, and distant ancestors became the children of their descendants.

Fortunately, one's sex tended to remain constant, otherwise things would become even further confused. Though there were rumors...

A sudden slam towards the front of the house that Yashiro's new mother had moved them into startled him out of his musings on the past. Following the slam there was a yell of "Shoes!" and a tearful sounding apology. As he was wondering if what was happening was what he thought was happening, the female nervously looked over this, her latest litter, and hastily lined them up in the middle of what looked to be the living-room as if for inspection.

"Look Naruto," a boy he realized was Sasuke said in a voice that was obviously meant to be comforting, but sounded a great deal out of practice in that area. "Someone heard about Obito and decided to bring you a new friend to keep you company until Obito returns."

"Really?!" an over-loud voice exclaimed, and suddenly something massive and orange with blond hair and blue eyes knelt down in front of the group and started examining them.

Without warning, the very same hands which had dumped a bucket of chum on him several years earlier when he'd been on patrol in that neighborhood that had the home of the woman who hoarded the meanest and most vicious cats in existence grabbed him, and eyes that had lit up in laughter as he was nearly torn to shreds by about a thousand felines examined every inch of him.

"I want this one!" the voice which had cruelly taunted him as he had been rescued by his partner who'd had to drag him to the hospital where he'd been given a series of painful shots exclaimed, finally confirming what he'd thought all along.

He was in Hell.

* * *

><p>Mikoto who was still disappointed over the fact that she'd been unable to turn the stove on watched as the Uzumaki boy whom she'd been hoping would become friends with her son one day picked one of her children up and started to play with him. Rather than actively participating in the game, the son who had been picked up had done its best to play dead as if he were hoping that the boy would lose interest in him.<p>

As for Sasuke...

Sasuke was standing back watching the show with his arms folded across his chest, making no moves toward meeting any of his younger siblings. If she had to guess, she'd say that Sasuke wasn't interested in any of them, and the only person in the room he was showing any interest towards was the Uzumaki boy who was now wearing the crest of the Uchiha clan for some reason. The way Sasuke was looking at the boy reminded her of the protective manner in which Itachi had watched over Sasuke when he wasn't looking. Especially towards the end.

Well, that hadn't gone to plan...

* * *

><p>As Obito lay there snuggled between his new siblings who were likely also aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents, he dreamed. Rather than being a pleasant dream of the time Kakashi had caught the chicken pox and it was just him, Rin, and Minato-sensei, it was the nightmare from shortly after he died.<p>

He'd been looking up at two faces, both of them rather old. One of them mentioned him having similar abilities therefore being valuable or something. He blinked, and then there was only one face, a face that had belonged to an ancient old man who'd looked like a child molester or something. He had a panic attack or something when he'd seen the scythe the old man was carrying, and it had been hard to breathe, and he'd been unable to breathe no matter how much the creepy old man tried to get him to calm down and do so since it felt like he'd torn something when he had pulled away from him, and the next thing he knew he was sitting beside a fire. Sitting on the opposite side of the fire had been Hatake Sakumo who had explained to him that he was dead, and that they'd be stuck there until Kakashi arrived.

Not wanting to get lost if he wandered the afterlife with one of his eyes gone, he'd remained by the fire. For a while it was fine, then it got boring, and then he'd finally heard all of Sakumo's stories at least twice, and then he'd started wishing he'd been anywhere but there.

After that, he'd first woken up as a rat.


End file.
